Following other countries that have decided to require a parallel private 5G network, Brazil announced 5G auction to be held in October inviting all major 5G technology developers, The Brazilian Reports writes.
Australia and the US have already introduced two separate 5G networks. One is public and for general and commercial while the other network for the exclusive use by the federal administration and strategic businesses like the state-run Petrobras oil company.
Brazilian Communications Minister Fabio Faria announced last week his government plans to equip all 27 capital cities of Brazil with 5G technologies by July 2022, with network for at least 4G technology is planned for all towns having a population over 600 people.
Faria waved aside concerns about the use of Chinese 5G technologies for commercial purposes expressed by the United States, saying that they included some requirements and set stricter security standards for the potential suppliers.
He named Ericsson and Nokia as most probable suppliers, saying that Huawei Technologies Co Ltd would likely be uninterested in building a 5G network limited to government use, a very small portion of Brazil’s overall 5G network, but also mentioned Huawei technologies were labelled as “having backdoors.”
Brazilian federal government itself recently signed a new contract with Huawei through the data processing service Serpro, despite restricted access of Chinese 5G suppliers to the government network
Backdoors are a manufacturers’ method of entry into systems (software, platforms, devices, etc.) and supposedly allow spying, and are found in network equipment or software.
He admitted that geopolitics played a role in the government’s concerns with regard to Chinese suppliers citing legitimate concerns about the security of sensitive information after the issue was raised by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan during his August visit to Brazil, though he recalled that it was the US that spied on then-Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and federal government agencies in 2011- a scandal revealed by Edward Snowden.
In the wake of US attacks on Huawei there were talks of building 5G networks in Brazil based on American Open RAN technology.
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